If, as surveys indicate, estate agents and journalists are the lowest form of human life, then what does that make letting agents? Read yesterday's report on rented housing from the local government select committee and the answer emerges: Dante should have created a 10th circle of hell just for those middlemen and women who find tenants and let properties.

Letting agents are part of "the property industry's wild west", MPs were told by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. Consumer champions Which? records routine problems of agents cheating tenants with chicanery over fees and renting out rundown properties. Landlords suffer too, with inadequate vetting of tenants and not passing on rents.

Why is there such epic bad behaviour? Because there are barely any rules to prevent it. The MPs note: "Time and again, we heard concern that anyone could set up as a letting agent without qualifications or prior knowledge of the industry." As such the lettings agents are merely the most obnoxious facet of an entire market rigged against tenants. True, there are good firms – but without even a mechanism for spotting cowboys, there is precious little incentive for any display of business ethics.

A decade ago, just under 10% of English households rented privately; now the proportion is around 17%. The lack of council housing and the gravity-defying unaffordability of many homes (especially in and around London) means more and more Britons will be renting for longer and longer – and so depending on lettings agents. Yet faced with calls from MPs, housing charities and local councils for greater accountability of intermediaries and landlords and protection of tenants, the coalition's response is reliably pathetic. All housing minister Mark Prisk could offer yesterday was a redress scheme for tenants who felt hard done by and a warning against "excessive regulation on the sector which would push up rents and reduce choice for tenants". As well as being bad policy-making, this is stupid politics: the lack of housing supply means that more Conservative voters are going to wind up renting.

Britain urgently needs more public housing, and a historic slump and rock-bottom interest rates would surely be the best time to build it. As for the private rental sector, there should be a national licensing scheme, but a modest stopgap would be accreditation schemes for good landlords and agents, run by local councils with funding from Eric Pickles's department. Finally, the very least that can be done is to make rental agents subject to the same regulation that governs sales agents, which would give the Office of Fair Trading the power to ban those who act improperly.